D&D General How Did You Generate Your Most Recent Character's Stats?

[AlViking]

And IME that guy hiding in the back being ineffective ain't always the one with the bad stats. Quite the opposite, in fact: bad-stats guy is often the one front and centre trying to prove himself.

Or trying to commit suicide by goblin so the player can roll up a new character.

 

[Lanefan]

What my students had a problem with was the obvious inequity built into the rules. It was like starting a soccer game where some players might, randomly, only get to wear one shoe. Yes, you can argue it's fair in that everyone has the same chance of being advantaged/disadvantaged...but how does that make it a better game once you're actually playing it?

Thing is, disparity is not a bad thing. Right now Alphonso Davies is a far better football player (when he's not injured!) than most of the other pro players out there; ditto Connor McDavid when it comes to hockey. Do those disparities make football or hockey worse games? No.

Why not? Because while those individuals might dominate right now, they won't be at their peaks forever; and others will rise to take their places.

Another example: look at the MCU and the power disparities between the original six Avengers. In a straight-up fight Thor or Hulk would wipe the floor with either of Hawkeye or Black Widow.

And yet when the chips were down they worked fine as a party.

 

[Lanefan]

Or trying to commit suicide by goblin so the player can roll up a new character.

Sure, I'm fine with that. There's ways of doing it that aren't too obvious.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I'm more "what goes around, comes around" when it comes to this.

And, IME (even including 3e) I've had great stats on characters who didn't get out of their third session and relatively awful stats on characters who lasted for years.

Further, if a character just isn't working - be it due to stats or some other reason - nothing ever stops you (I hope!) from either having it go out with a whimper and simply retire from adventuring or having it bravely throw its hit-point-laden self at the enemy in hopes of going out in a blaze of glory.

if i'm allowed to simply retire them any time i like whats the issue with retiring them straight away when i see their initial stats until i get a character with stats i do want to play?

 

[Lanefan]

if i'm allowed to simply retire them any time i like whats the issue with retiring them straight away when i see their initial stats?

Because getting the character into play gives it a chance to work out OK despite its stats (believe me, some do!). If it doesn't, retiring it serves to make the campaign setting* just that little bit broader and deeper in the long run.

* - irrelevant if the DM is running a hard-line AP with no deviation into the rest of the setting, so let's ignore those.

In any other campaign your retired character has the potential to become a known contact, a possible information source, a reason to maybe flesh out the town or wherever that it retired to, and-or a possible anchor point for a party base of operations (which could be as simple as the retired character's house). Further, that character is and remains available for you to cycle back in later if doing so makes sense and-or you have new or better ideas for it.

This assumes your retired characters don't instantly become NPCs; your characters belong to you even if they're not adventuring, and any DM who claims them as NPCs if they retire is IMO a DM well worth walking out on.

 

[Clint_L]

Thing is, disparity is not a bad thing. Right now Alphonso Davies is a far better football player (when he's not injured!) than most of the other pro players out there; ditto Connor McDavid when it comes to hockey. Do those disparities make football or hockey worse games? No.

Why not? Because while those individuals might dominate right now, they won't be at their peaks forever; and others will rise to take their places.

Inherent disparity makes those games MUCH worse if you aspire to be more than a spectator at the highest levels. You can argue that it makes them better entertainment, but I don't think disparity makes them better games.

Whereas in a tabletop game, we don't have to have random disparity. So why should we? We control all the variables. Nobody is born with a certain size, brain, personality, etc.

Another example: look at the MCU and the power disparities between the original six Avengers. In a straight-up fight Thor or Hulk would wipe the floor with either of Hawkeye or Black Widow.

And yet when the chips were down they worked fine as a party.

As a form of entertinment, 100%. But if you were actually playing them as a TTRPG, I suspect the person playing Hawkeye would feel pretty useless in most situations when compared to the person playing Thor, once the dice start rolling. Yes, a skilled DM could try to balance things ("Oh look, another trap that involves pinpoint accuracy!"), but most of the time, it's not gonna feel like you're contributing much.

If D&D was pure roleplay, this becomes less of an issue. But it's still a game. With a lot of rules and a lot of rolls. Balance is normally very important in games. When we play Eldritch Horror, each character is different and you can argue about which are better or worse overall, but it is clear that the designers were at pains to make them as close to equal as possible. Ditto Pandemic, or whatever. Same for almost all TTRPGS that aren't D&D or D&D clones like Pathfinder.

Going back to my example, would soccer be a better game if we randomly assigned some kids to have an extra disadvantage at the start, like one less shoe? I think we all agree that no, it would not. It doesn't make sense to make the parts of the game that you can control unfair. People inherently rebel at that.

I played D&D for years when rolling was the only method, and I can't think of one time when the game was improved by some players having better ability score totals than others. And I can think of lots of times when it was a problem. Maybe not a huge problem, but it was there.